A Farewell to Legs: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,29

suggested. Strangely, she smiled.

“You have to care to be that angry,” she said quietly. “You can’t have a crime of passion if you don’t have the passion.”

“So how did you react?” I asked.

Stephanie hesitated. In fact, she came to a complete halt, and if the lighting at Muntbugger’s hadn’t been fashionably dim, I’d have sworn she was blushing. The waiter bailed her out by bringing our lunch, and she waited until he left, then tried, unsuccessfully, to express her thoughts again. She started her answer more than once, and never uttered a complete word. I decided to bail her out.

“You had affairs of your own,” I said, and she looked down at her food, and nodded. “Why couldn’t you tell me that?”

“I didn’t want you to think badly of me.” I had to strain to hear her.

“I never thought my opinion meant so much to you,” I said.

“Well, it does.” She spoke quickly, to get past this sticky point. “Anyway, I decided to match Louis embarrassment for embarrassment, but I couldn’t do it. I had a couple of quick. . . episodes, and then I gave up. He didn’t care, and I learned not to care, too. Finally, our marriage found its level of dysfunction, and we made it work for us.”

“Functional dysfunction.”

“Yeah,” she chuckled. “Besides, if I was going to have Louis killed for having an affair, why wait for this particular one? He’d had more than I could count.”

“Who do you think did have a reason to kill Legs?”

“That’s what I’ve been agonizing over. Politically, there were lots of people who didn’t like Louis. God knows, even I didn’t agree with him politically much of the time. But to kill him? In Washington, if you don’t like somebody, you make their life miserable. Killing him would just end the fun.”

“How about personally? One of his ex-girlfriends?”

“Most of them were politically motivated—they wanted to move up, and sleeping with a connected guy helped them up the ladder. I can’t imagine any of them being in love with him, certainly not enough to kill the next in line.” “Nonetheless,” I said, “who was the one just before Ms. Cheri Braxton?” She winced at the name.

“Cheri?”

“I just report the facts—I don’t make ’em up.”

“Let’s see. The most recent one I knew about was named. . . oh, come on. . . Robyn. With a ‘y.’ Robyn Ezterhaus.” She spelled the last name, too.

“Did the affair with Robyn last an unusually long time? Was it especially intense?”

“They all tend to run together, but I don’t think so. And after all, Aaron. . .”

“What?”

Stephanie frowned. “It doesn’t make sense. If she wanted Louis so badly, she had to get rid of the competition. His being married was the problem. Why didn’t she come after me?”

I stared down and speared a piece of grilled chicken, which was the only thing making the salad even marginally interesting. “Why, indeed?” I said.

Chapter

Seventeen

Stephanie gave me a few names and phone numbers, including some of Legs’ political adversaries (of whom there was a large selection). Somewhere on the list was talk show host Estéban Suarez, with whom Legs had a very public argument not long before he died. Through Internet sources, I managed a few additional names. She promised to let me talk to her sons, and to Legs’ mother. When I asked about his brother, she said, “I don’t really know him very well. I can’t make any predictions.” Still, she promised to try.

When I got home from lunch, I changed back into my civilian clothes (which would have gotten me kicked out of even a classy McDonald’s) and checked on the answering machine, which was unblinking, and the computer, where there was a message for me on WUSS.

Peter Arnowitz, a novelist, occasional screenwriter (no credits on anything you’ve ever seen), and overall conspiracy theorist, had read my post about Legs. Pete is the kind of guy who has mysterious “sources” in every branch of the government, the movie business, law enforcement, and for all I know, the local 7-Eleven. He never divulges a source, and he’s never wrong. Ever.

Pete’s reply read: “I can’t confirm this, but I’m told through sources close to the investigation that the wife is the prime suspect. An arrest could happen within days. No physical evidence (that is, fingerprints) that I know of, but Gibson messed around so much they figure his wife has to be mad at him. What’s puzzling is why they’re looking to act so quickly. They don’t have